to make a determination whether it constitutes workplace harassment and/or discrimination against persons-of-hemophagia.
Am I clear?
”
Alex bites his lip. The moment passes; nobody utters the words
stakeholder management
in any context, tasteless or otherwise. But he’s managed to make his lip bleed, and the trickle oozing onto his tongue tastes like, no, it smells like,
no
, it reminds him of . . .
Mhari is saying something about teams and assigning a sprint backlog and prepping a new burndown chart and who takes on what roles. Alex shivers imperceptibly, and tries to shut the memory of his first orgasm back in whatever dusty memory box it crept out of: this is no time to be distracted. “John, Dick, you’re on BRAINWASHING: go find a bar and practice your pickup lines. Janice and Evan, you’re taking BLOOD BANK. Those are tonight’s tasks. Tomorrow Janice can return the samples while Evan and Alex tackle the JESUS STUFF items. If you need support I’ll pitch in. I’m going to take PROTECTIVE CLOTHING and LATEX MASKS but I’ve got some shopping for equipment to do first, so we can work on it tomorrow; I’ll need one of you boys. And Dick and Alex can team on FRESHLY SQUEEZED BULL. Okay, on to phase two: let’s start drawing up our work units . . .”
• • •
A PAIR OF VAMPIRES WITH CLIPBOARDS WALK INTO THE ACUTE Receiving Unit at a busy London teaching hospital, shortly after eight o’clock at night.
One is male and one is female. They’re both smartly dressed, with badges on lanyards around their necks. Everything about them screams
outsourced private sector management
, except it’s nine in the evening and there is no way that consultants from Accenture or PwC would be seen dead working this late amidst the vomit and screams of the unwashed sick plebs.
The male discreetly elbows his companion (pin-striped trouser suit, short spiky hair with racy violet highlights) and whispers, “We should have come as doctors. All it takes is a stethoscope, how hard can it be?”
“Don’t be fucking stupid,” she hisses at him. “What if somebody asked us to
fix
someone?”
“We could tell them they feel better? They’d believe it.” (It was true: to everybody’s astonishment, they’d sent John and Dick to test it. John, because he fancied himself as a pickup artist, and Dick because he was clearly a hopeless case, the twenty-something programmer most likely to still be a virgin. But Dick had scored with his first attempt.
Despite
his pig farmer’s suit, questionable personal hygiene, bulging, watery hyperthyroidal eyes, and the miasma of squalid dissipation that trailed around behind him at all times, he’d slouched into a high-end club and squelched out again after half an hour; wearing the stunned, toad-like grin of a first-time winner in life’s lottery, sandwiched between a pair of mistrustful anorexic blondes who clung to his arms possessively and glared daggers at one another across his prematurely thinning pate. John, aghast, had stuck around only long enough to obtain photographic evidence of the coup, then chickened out of his own chicken run and went home to commune with a bottle of limoncello instead, depressed by the ease with which Dick had devalued his expertise with the ladies.)
“Yes, but that wouldn’t be—” Janice shuts up as a harried-looking bloke in blue scrubs marches briskly towards them.
“You can’t wait here, you’re blocking the—” he begins, then stops as Janice stares into his eyes.
“Health and Safety Inspectorate spot-check. We’re here to verify that your unit is following approved hazardous waste disposal procedures during non-core business hours,” she informs him.
“But you—”
“
Believe
it,” she emphasizes.
The A&E nurse blinks a couple of times as he assimilates this new information. “You need to go and talk to janitorial services, then. Not here, this is the triage and control post. You’re in the way, we have
Am I clear?
”
Alex bites his lip. The moment passes; nobody utters the words
stakeholder management
in any context, tasteless or otherwise. But he’s managed to make his lip bleed, and the trickle oozing onto his tongue tastes like, no, it smells like,
no
, it reminds him of . . .
Mhari is saying something about teams and assigning a sprint backlog and prepping a new burndown chart and who takes on what roles. Alex shivers imperceptibly, and tries to shut the memory of his first orgasm back in whatever dusty memory box it crept out of: this is no time to be distracted. “John, Dick, you’re on BRAINWASHING: go find a bar and practice your pickup lines. Janice and Evan, you’re taking BLOOD BANK. Those are tonight’s tasks. Tomorrow Janice can return the samples while Evan and Alex tackle the JESUS STUFF items. If you need support I’ll pitch in. I’m going to take PROTECTIVE CLOTHING and LATEX MASKS but I’ve got some shopping for equipment to do first, so we can work on it tomorrow; I’ll need one of you boys. And Dick and Alex can team on FRESHLY SQUEEZED BULL. Okay, on to phase two: let’s start drawing up our work units . . .”
• • •
A PAIR OF VAMPIRES WITH CLIPBOARDS WALK INTO THE ACUTE Receiving Unit at a busy London teaching hospital, shortly after eight o’clock at night.
One is male and one is female. They’re both smartly dressed, with badges on lanyards around their necks. Everything about them screams
outsourced private sector management
, except it’s nine in the evening and there is no way that consultants from Accenture or PwC would be seen dead working this late amidst the vomit and screams of the unwashed sick plebs.
The male discreetly elbows his companion (pin-striped trouser suit, short spiky hair with racy violet highlights) and whispers, “We should have come as doctors. All it takes is a stethoscope, how hard can it be?”
“Don’t be fucking stupid,” she hisses at him. “What if somebody asked us to
fix
someone?”
“We could tell them they feel better? They’d believe it.” (It was true: to everybody’s astonishment, they’d sent John and Dick to test it. John, because he fancied himself as a pickup artist, and Dick because he was clearly a hopeless case, the twenty-something programmer most likely to still be a virgin. But Dick had scored with his first attempt.
Despite
his pig farmer’s suit, questionable personal hygiene, bulging, watery hyperthyroidal eyes, and the miasma of squalid dissipation that trailed around behind him at all times, he’d slouched into a high-end club and squelched out again after half an hour; wearing the stunned, toad-like grin of a first-time winner in life’s lottery, sandwiched between a pair of mistrustful anorexic blondes who clung to his arms possessively and glared daggers at one another across his prematurely thinning pate. John, aghast, had stuck around only long enough to obtain photographic evidence of the coup, then chickened out of his own chicken run and went home to commune with a bottle of limoncello instead, depressed by the ease with which Dick had devalued his expertise with the ladies.)
“Yes, but that wouldn’t be—” Janice shuts up as a harried-looking bloke in blue scrubs marches briskly towards them.
“You can’t wait here, you’re blocking the—” he begins, then stops as Janice stares into his eyes.
“Health and Safety Inspectorate spot-check. We’re here to verify that your unit is following approved hazardous waste disposal procedures during non-core business hours,” she informs him.
“But you—”
“
Believe
it,” she emphasizes.
The A&E nurse blinks a couple of times as he assimilates this new information. “You need to go and talk to janitorial services, then. Not here, this is the triage and control post. You’re in the way, we have
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